Just then a bird flew noiselessly up into the beech over them, they saw it was a jay, and kept quite still. The next instant he was off, and they heard him and his friends, for a jay is never alone, screeching in the jungle. Looking back towards the quiet bay, it appeared as if it was raining fast, but without a sound, for the surface was dimpled with innumerable tiny circlets like those caused by raindrops. These were left by the midges as they danced over the water, touching it now and then. “Did you hear that?” It was the sound of a distant gun shorn of the smartness of the report by the trees. “The savages have matchlocks,” said Bevis. “They must be ever so much more dangerous than we thought.” “Perhaps we’d better go,” said Mark, casting off the beech bough. The current slowly drifted the raft out into the bay, and then they took their poles, and returned along the channel between the reeds and sedge banks. It took some time to reach New Formosa. “I wonder if the creature out of the wave has been,” said Mark. “Suppose we go very quietly and see what it is.” “So we will.” Keeping Pan close at their heels, they stole along the path to the stockade, then crept up behind it to the gateway, and suddenly burst in. “Ah!” “Here he is.” “Yow-wow!” “O! it’s the pheasant!” “Only the pheasant!” The pheasant, flying straight out to sea for the cornfields, halted on New Formosa, attracted by the glimpse he caught of the fence and hut. The enclosure seemed so much like that in which he had been bred, and in which he had enjoyed so much food, that he came down and rambled about inside, visiting even the cave, and stepping on the table. When they came in so unexpectedly on him, he rose up rocket-like, and at first made towards the jungle, but in a minute, recovering himself, he swept round and went to the mainland by the Waste. He did not want to return to the preserves--anywhere else in preference. While the dinner was preparing, Mark got out his fishing-rod, and fitted up the spinning tackle for pike, for he meant to angle round the island, and also some hooks for trimmers, if he could catch any bait, and hooks for night-lines, in case there should be eels. These trimmers and night-lines put them in mind of traps for kangaroos, they had no traps, but determined to set up some wires at a good distance from the knoll, so as not, in any case, to interfere with their shooting.